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The Ledgers of Baldr: 4E154
Actions Hall of the Five Can't even trust a fucking dragon to die. Everyone sets about frantically reanimating soldiers, breeding titans, and pyrizing woodland creatures. (1-4). Rhiam Reich The Reich makes flamethrowers(1234) Ignati Raise 4 armies. Ashelani With the newly rallied Ashelani marked, and the Carcinoborn tamed, the Nautilisks are called out of the ocean in revolt against the horrible taint that has struck the jungle. The Queen sings of a sea writhing with blood and tentacles, of a land where evil was born and must be kept. The jungle, the birthplace, has been injured. The tainted one must die. (Navy x4 -90 gold) Mu'lakka Fleet Admiral Le'Force orders yet more ships to be constructed, as he fears the tensions between the Reich and the rest of the world may require his services very shortly (Navy construction 1&2) He additionally orders research on a way to make sails catch wind more efficiently while cutting down on weight, increasing the overall speed of his ships (Naval research 3) The new colonists set to work creating vast vineyards, and using the grapes to produce what is promised to be the best vintage produced on Mu'lakka soil (Income 4) Kaz'ur Riding at the head of a group of the Kaz'ur outriders, the Salatim looks out on what used to be the southwestern coastline. What trees still stand are coated in spores and strange fungal growths. The water itself looks corrupted, spores coating it's surface, coloring it a hued pink. What is worse is the silence. Not a single sound emerges from the stretch of corrupted land, the creatures that had called this place home having been taken by the ever ravenous hunger. The outriders bristle in anger, and the Salatim's countenance is dark. Offshore, a Reich ship sails, sporting the standard of their nation. "I had heard the stories, but to think it could be true..." He turns to the outriders. "You have done well. Watch, and ensure that those ships do nothing more. Follow them along the coast. Slay them if they try to land troops." They nod, and he departs. Several hours later, the sun has fallen and he exits the council chambers in the tower of Babel, his features grim but resolute. He is tormented by visions of their sacred valleys overrun, the hunger first claiming the walls, then the mountains, the outskirts of the valley, and eventually climbing even the great tower, as he himself does now. Upon reaching the top, he gazes upon the small shrine that adorns the top of this mighty structure, standing in remembrance of their creator. He gazes upon his homeland. Their gift, and their burden. His voice rings out, firm with determination, the normally jovial priest deathly serious. "It must not be." And so he prays. Day and night. As word reaches the other Ashik, they pray. Everywhere from Stavengar to the south seas to the valleys of Kaz'ur, they turn their heads to the Tower of Babel, they prostrate themselves, and they pray. "Please, oh father, aid your children." They pray. "Give us the means to protect our home. Your home." They beseech. Never before have the wills of the Ashik people been so thoroughly unified. (7 Actions, Still the Hunger). Under the cover of night, an ambitious explorer slips out into the harbor, along the last stretch of Kaz'ur coastline to remain unclaimed by the hunger. He has been charged by the Shahadash to settle Manuk. He brings with him a party of 25 Ashik, all deathly quiet. Preparing to slip past the Reich's navy, Ibn Battoi knows in his heart this may be the most important expedition of his life. (Expansion, -10 Wealth) (-90 Wealth spent on actions). Results: The Halls of the Five: 8, 1, 1, 20 Only a single army has been able to be raised this turn (-10 income). Rhiam Reich: 15, 12, 13, 14 Emperor Helmuth the Broken sits on his balcony in his wood and iron wheelchair, wishing for the fourth time that day that he had legs once again. His Master of Fleet has just finished filling out the requisition forms to draft four new navies, each ship loaded with crates upon crates of spores. It will be his final act as Master of Fleet, Helmuth muses. The monarch has executed all of his court for fear of treason. His wife and two young sons, as well, are dead by his hand, poisoned quietly at a banquet not two months back. All the treacherous nations of the world, the Emperor thinks, will soon suffer as his people have suffered. The Hunger will be the price the world pays for its betrayal of the Reich. Day by day, refugees from the south, where thick salt-and-pepper plumes of virulent spores blot out the sun, are fielded into wood-covered quarantine pits to stop the spread of the Hunger. The Emperor turns his scarred, fleshy head and looks from his balcony towards the outskirts of the city, where five huge quarantine pits are visible. Inside the pits it is dark, cramped, and cold, and sickness spreads rapidly. The Reich cannot afford to assign food rations to many of its detainees. “A mercy, really,” the Emperor says out loud in his hoarse, ragged voice to no one in particular. The pit where Alphonse and his father are kept contains over a thousand other refugees from the southern foothills. Alphonse is glad orcs like him can see in the dark—it makes it easier to live in the quarantine zone. He wipes his nose on his sleeve, accidentally jostling a dwarfen woman standing next to him and earning him a scowl. Many people in the pits have given up hope, but Alphonse knows that the Emperor will be there to protect his family. Everybody knows that the Emperor always does the right thing. There is a noise from up above, something heavy is being carted over the thick logs that form the roof of the camp. The food cart. Little Alphonse knows that it’s time to find his father. The crowd surges forward towards the exit, jostling and shouting for food. There is a loud booming sound, followed by panicked shouts. “The doors! Five deliver us, they’ve shut the doors!” Alphonse pushes through the riotous crowd and shouts for his father in his reedy little voice, completely drowned out by the noise and clatter of the refugees. There is a strong smoky smell in the air. Scared, the little boy curls up in a little ball and closes his eyes. In his mind, he is an orcish knight fighting on the fields of Ardunne. He looks a scary bug thing straight in the eye as he runs it down on his horse. This knight is not afraid of anything. No one can hurt Alphonse Deitrich, soldier of the Reich. Emperor Helmuth watches, unblinking, as the refugee pits in the near distance are set aflame one by one. The Ignati Tribes: You have successfully raised zero armies (-0 income)! The Ashelani Dominion: 6, 20, 7, 16 Two navies are raised (-20 income). In the north, the fast-growing parasitic life form known as the Hunger has blighted huge swathes of jungle. Ashelani chitter and die with spores caught in their insides, eating them away to nothing but carapace. Thousands of such carapaces litter the blackened jungle terrain, pecked with fuzzy white and black mold. The psychic agony that the Queen now bears is deafening—the Hunger affords its victims the most agonizing death imaginable. Most Ashelani who are taken by the Hunger kill themselves by clawing out their eyes rather than face the pain. The hive cities beneath the infected area have been abandoned, succumbing to the invasive new species. Many transport worms, it is speculated, are infected, and several hundred of them are killed by your warriors, who tear open their long, fleshy guts with their talons and mandibles, and then collect the segments and have flammenwormers incinerate them (-7 income). The Mu’lakka Lands: 15, 11, 8, 13 Admiral Le’Force has filed permits to make the shipyard off-limits to non-government contracts, and civilian vessels can no longer be built there until the war is over. The public is a bit annoyed by this, but Rak’min assures the people that every ship is necessary in order to fight the spread of the Hunger to other lands. The two new navies wait in your harbors now, their gilded hulls shining in the sun (-20 income). In less than one week, they will set off for the first war Mu’lakka has ever known. On the docks, a crowd has been present for the last three days to wish the sailors well. Inspired by the design of the conch shell, your engineers have begun drafting plans for sails that curl inward on themselves, forming small wind tunnels for extra speed on the water. The project is still in the planning stages, though. On Manuk, small-scale wineries begin processing and bottling Victory Wine from the native grapes. Reception is mixed, with some good reviews “Mu’lakkan Victory Wine is, we can assure you, legally a type of wine.” There are also bad reviews: “Mu’lakkan Victory Wine is a crime against brewing that tastes like the piss of an orc who has eaten two days worth of asparagus.” Both good and bad reviewers, however, advocate drinking three glasses a day to support the war effort (+3 income). Kaz’ur: 13, 13, 20, 4, 4, 8, 20, 13 The Great Annals of Stavengar contain precious little information on the life form, as the history of Rhiam is one of the least studied scholarly subjects—many dwarf historians prefer to examine the Stinheim lineage above other areas. What few sources there are, though, are old folktales concerning an army of demons, represented by the ambiguous orcish glyph “Gefar,” meaning “Hunger,” leading the Salatim believe that the fungus may have demonic origin. The prayers at first don’t seem to have any effect, but their frequency is increased from once a day to twice a day, and the Hunger appears to slow in its growth noticeably. The fungal areas are still incredibly lethal, corroding your golems into clumps of bleached rock and dirt within days, and scouts report that the Hunger is more virulent outside your southern borders. Whereas your scholars once measured a growth of the fungus at a square inch per minute, the rate has slowed remarkably to one square inch roughly every hour. Fortunately for your people, the rocky mountain steppes seem to slow down the Hunger even more, although a small bit of your southern coastline is now uninhabitable (-90 wealth, -3 income, Hunger growth rate within your borders has slowed, but not stopped, +1 culture for state-mandated prayer hours). Meanwhile, your expansion vessels embark from the northern coasts and sail until they reach Manuk, setting up a small village on a snowy island on the outskirts of the continent. Resources are sparse, but your people are glad to be away from the Hunger that blights their homeland (+4 income, -10 wealth). Battles Battle of the Roiling Sea Ashelani navies: 6, 10+6 = 22 Mu’lakkan navies: 1, 8+28 = 37 Rhiam navies: 9, 10 = 19 The Mu’lakkans arrive to find the boats of the Reich in terrible disrepair, each one almost completely overrun with black growths and trailing spores. Wary of drawing too close, Admiral Le’Force decides to harpoon the enemy boats from a distance. One by one the ships sink into the cold black waters, unable to fight back. The crewmen from the Reich flail about in the water, screaming, pleading for their lives. Le’Force turns away. He cannot take them aboard. To do that would be risking the lives of his own men, and the welfare of his ships. The Mu’lakkan sailors watch with heavy hearts and then turn their boats away, bound south for the Reich. Meanwhile, closer to the western shore, the Ashelani signal to the Mu’lakkans telepathically, telling them that their assistance is no longer needed. Le’Force thanks them, wishing them well in their fight against the encroaching Hunger. The Mu’lakkans, he muses, have picked the right side in this war. Elsewhere, the last northern fleet of the Reich is strategically maneuvered into thick strands of krakenoid webbing and ensnared to transport the Hunger to Liosa. Category:The Ledgers of Baldr